The Indian Minister for External Affairs, S. M. Krishna, is visiting Israel starting January 9. The good thing is that such visits these days occasion no public teeth-gnashing by leaders of political parties that promote themselves as protectors of Indian Muslims and their interests. In an earlier time, any public interaction with Israel would have elicited howls of protest – the easy way of garnering political support on the cheap by conflating the issue of Palestinian rights and Arab grievances against Israel with the amor propre’ of Indian Muslims. There is now recognition that Indian Muslim voters are no fools and it is counter-productive to demonize Israel, which since its founding in 1948 has enjoyed a tight but subterranean relationship with India and, in the short span of twenty years since the bilateral ties came out of the closet, has emerged as the foremost supplier of advanced military technology and, verily, the western pillar of India’s security architecture (with Japan as the eastern pillar), if only Delhi has the geopolitical wit and the strategic wisdom to see it that way.

The trouble is the Indian government is still chary about being viewed as too close to Israel for reasons that were not sustainable in the past and make even less sense now. One would have thought that with appeasement politics given a burial by Maulana Jamil Ilyas, head of the All India Organization of Imams and Mosques representing some half-million imams, who when visiting Israel in February 2007 to participate in an inter-faith dialogue, praised the Israeli government for allowing sharia to be practiced by Muslims of that country, Delhi would be less reticent about acknowledging Israel’s growing significance in India’s national security scheme of things. And yet the Israeli ambassador until a few months back, Mark Sofer, good naturedly complained throughout his tenure that India treated Israel as a married man does his mistress – intimate and confiding in closed quarters but kept at arm’s length in public.

If the details were to be out about the quality and extent of Indo-Israeli cooperation and collaboration in defence, space, and anti-terrorism spheres, it would astonish most people. Suffice to say, for instance, that the reason Soviet vintage military hardware in the Indian order-of-battle -– combat aircraft, tanks, and seaborne weapons platforms, is still reasonably in-date, technology wise, is because these have been retrofitted and upgraded with advanced Israeli avionics, missiles, radar, night vision equipment, fire control systems, etc. Israel is assisting DRDO to produce – in the face of American opposition — a first-rate AESA (Active Electronically Scanned Array) radar to mount on the indigenous Tejas light combat aircraft or any other fighter-bomber in the IAF inventory – the sort of radar for air-to-ground strikes that is missing in the Eurofighter shortlisted in the MMRCA sweepstakes. In like vein, the Indian Navy has helped Israeli submarines, for example, to conduct test-firings of cruise and ballistic missiles in the Indian Ocean and the two navies have together worked on complex sea denial maneuvers. And Israel is involved in ISRO projects to configure micro-satellites – its specialty — for relatively short duration, low-earth orbit, missions. Referring to the potential for technology and other cooperation, Major General (ret) Amos Gilad, Director of political-security affairs at the Israeli Defence Ministry, exclaimed “The sky is the limit!” when I met him, as I did many other senior Israeli government ministers and officials, in Tel Aviv during a trip to Israel undertaken last summer at the invitation of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The thing is, the Israeli government picked up an idea I had originally pitched a decade ago to Uzi Landau, the then Israeli Minister of the Interior when he was in Delhi. I had proposed that for Israel to develop enduring links with India, it had to go beyond being a mere peddler of military wares and begin investing in Indian defence industry. I had suggested that, given India’s comparative advantage in low cost labour, Israel should transfer most of its production lines for traditional conventional military goods, from small arms and ammo, tanks and artillery, to naval fast attack craft, to jointly owned Companies in India to service the needs of both the Indian and Israeli armed forces, and to export to third countries, and that India could reciprocate by channeling huge funds into extreme high-end, high-value, military research and development and production programmes, such as the “Iron Dome” missile defence system, integrated all-arms network-centric systems for tactical and strategic warfare, space-based “killer” satellites, and fourth and fifth-generation thermonuclear weapons. Such a cross-invested Indo-Israeli defence industrial combine, I argued, will be profitable and a world-beater. Apparently convinced, Tel Aviv has been willing to make a start but the Indian government, predictably, is dithering, unsure about meeting Israeli requests for equity in such joint ventures beyond the officially permitted 26% level. Dr V.K. Saraswat, Science Adviser to Defence Minister, told me the Indian government fears that allowing a foreign country to own controlling shares will make for a “subservient” Indian defence industry. But were the defence industrial links to evolve along lines indicated above, what would result is mutual dependence. Why is that bad?

However that issue is settled, there is something else Delhi should capitalize on: the recently discovered potential reserves in Israel’s Mediterranean offshore of 1,300 billion cubic metres of gas. Minister Krishna should secure Israel’s approval for an ONGC Videsh project of a pipeline to carry this gas to a convenient point for offtaking by the Indian power sector and industry, and canvas, moreover, for the Israeli sovereign fund being mooted to handle the revenues earned from its gas find to invest in the Indian energy sector, especially in solar technology where Israel is leader.

The visiting Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz indicated that India ranks next only to the United States in policy importance. The question is whether the Indian government will show foresight in investing politically in Israel, get the Indo-Israeli defence industrial complex off the ground, and benefit from Israel’s offshore gas, or whether it will once again miss a strategic opportunity.

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About Bharat Karnad

Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, he was Member of the (1st) National Security Advisory Board and the Nuclear Doctrine-drafting Group, and author, among other books of, 'Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security: The Realist Foundations of Strategy', 'India's Nuclear Policy' and most recently, 'Why India is Not a Great Power (Yet)'. Educated at the University of California (undergrad and grad), he was Visiting Scholar at Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania, the Shanghai Institutes of International Studies, and Henry L. Stimson Center, Washington, DC.

4 Responses to Looking West, as far as Israel

Our system and its “design intent”. We have 40 OFB’s, DRDO (with 48 labs) + 8 more defense sector PSU’s. Even after decades HAL is not an aircraft design agency in the classic sense, they are more happy to upgrade and produce foreign aircraft with “deep” TOT rather than devote energies on the Tejas or they are on to the next, next gen project such as the AMCA, without first maturing the Tejas platform. The Israeli radar on Tejas was an acknowledgment that our own AESA is not ready and nowhere close to the needs of the forces.

The forces are happy to import the “latest” from foreign sources (did you see the recent news of $2 million for a single mid range missile, like the MICA on the M2K) instead of working with internal organizations with reasonable GSQRs, participation and even compromise taking into account our capability levels and likely threats.

To top it all a government that is happy to spend a little over 2% on defense and continue with the general state of affairs, which is possible due to the severe lack of accountability in our system of governance – especially on security policies.

The design intent of the system was statist and bureaucratic and never to build a MIC, which has to be driven by a mercantilist framework to succeed and thrive.

The result is till 2001, while we were importing from the rest of the world from “private” foreign companies, Indian private companies were barred from the MIC.

It is not that they do not try, they do. Agni III alone was completely built by private companies, some 248 of them. L&T, Mahindras and Tatas are some big names “trying” to get a foot hold into a space, where if the policies and structure are set right, a profitable venture is virtually assured with the huge and diverse needs of the Indian military. But how many are willing to invest in a game where “none” of the parties concerned in government is committed to building an indigenous MIC.

What is needed are the right structures and the right design intent. The design intent should be a MIC rooted in mercantilist principles. The structure should be such that all interested parties, MOD, the forces and labs work towards such a framework.

The current mess is not unlike Augean Stables where there is no room for reform and a Herculean effort is needed to clean up the mess. The entire statist structure has to go. OFB’s and majority of DRDO have to be divested – save for strategic programs and core research.

Inviting more FDI, even from well meaning Israel, where much of the relationship will be a win-win – without this reset of the “design intent” will be a serious handicap to India’s great power ambitions. Great power without hard power is a chimera. This hard power has to largely stem from indigenous sources. But, without such a hard reset, the next best bet is to invite friendly countries and allow them to invest in an Indian MIC. Maybe we are destined to be laggards for a long time to come. 😦

A superb and realistic article. The Israeli stand point has been told to me personally by the power-that-be in Israel. Some of them have placed the Indo-Israeli ties at the same level as Israel-US ties for the present and even beyond that in the future. The GoI is solely to blame, not because of its “sensitivity” to Indian Muslims, but because of its lack of its deliberate lack of sensitivity to India’s future. The fact that India is nothing but a third-rate US stooge and “rent-boy” is something that is talked about openly in circles of powers world wide. It’s a pity that the security and future of 1.3 billion people is being bartered away by just 6-7 persons.

CORRECTED POST
A superb and realistic article. The Israeli stand point has been told to me personally by the power-that-be in Israel. Some of them have placed the Indo-Israeli ties at the same level as Israel-US ties for the present and even beyond that in the future. The GoI is solely to blame, not because of its “sensitivity” to Indian Muslims, but because of its deliberate lack of sensitivity to India’s future. The fact that India is nothing but a third-rate US stooge and “rent-boy” is something that is talked about openly in circles of powers world wide. It’s a pity that the security and future of 1.3 billion people is being bartered away by just 6-7 persons.

I think there will be a real fillip to the Indo-Israel relation if Narendra Modi becomes the PM, considering the fact that Israeli companies have heavily invested in Gujarat and Modi has been more than a passive supporter.